The Sermon on the Mount - Bill Mounce

As I continue reading about the idea of organic (non-traditional) church plants, I keep seeing people's recommendations to begin teaching on the more practical portions of scriptures (like the Sermon on the Mount). Thus, I wanted to find a good series on the passage in Matthew and here it is for you as well.

I know of Bill Mounce because he authored the Greek textbook that we used in Elemetary Greek. It's a great text and you should check it out.

Bill Mounce's Series on the Sermon on the Mount

I'm watching you Dad (for Parents)

Ravi Zacharias_2

He is a Christian apologist (defender of the faith) and a prolific writer. Better yet, he was born in India. "Let My People Think" is Ravi's radio broadcast. This is a link to the archives. Pick one that looks interesting and be enlightened.

Here are some videos:
Q&A #4


Q&A #5


Q&A #6

Keith Green - Devotions or Devotion

What a great classic teaching by one of recent history's most passionate Christians!

Alan Hirsch - FOCUS Lubbock

I was furtunate enough to make it to the BGCT FOCUS Lubbock Collegiate Conference this past Saturday, and I thoroughly enjoyed and benefitted from Alan Hirsch's message. I found this interview with him done somewhere else, but it's all I could find to give you a taste.


Also, check out his website, personal blog, ministry blog, and books. The Shaping of Things to Come is on my "to read soon list".

"The Stranger"

*This is an illustration that I once read that I have been searching for over a period of months... enjoy... and lament*

A few months before I was born, my dad met a stranger who was new to our small Tennessee town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer, and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around to welcome me into the world a few months later.

As I grew up I never questioned his place in our family. Mom taught me to love the Word of God. Dad taught me to obey it. But the stranger was our storyteller. He could weave the most fascinating tales. Adventures, mysteries and comedies were daily conversations. He could hold our whole family spellbound for hours each evening. He was like a friend to the whole family. He took Dad, Bill and me to our first major league baseball game. He was always encouraging us to see the movies and he even made arrangements to introduce us to several movie stars.

The stranger was an incessant talker. Dad didn't seem to mind, but sometimes Mom would quietly get up - while the rest of us were enthralled with one of his stories of faraway places - and go to her room read her Bible and pray. I wonder now if she ever prayed that the stranger would leave. You see, my dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions. But this stranger never felt an obligation to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our house - not from us, from our friends, or adults. Our longtime visitor, however, used occasional four-letter words that burned my ears and made Dad squirm. To my knowledge the stranger was never confronted.

My dad was a teetotaler who didn't permit alcohol in his home - not even for cooking. But the stranger felt he needed exposure and enlightened us to other ways of life. He offered us beer and other alcoholic beverages often. He made cigarettes look tasty, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (too much too freely) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, andgenerally embarrassing. I know now that my early concepts of the man/woman relationship were influenced by the stranger.

As I look back, I believe it was the grace of God that the stranger did not influence us more. Time after time he opposed the values of my parents. Yet he was seldom rebuked and never asked to leave. More than thirty years have passed since the stranger moved in with the young family on Morningside Drive. But if I were to walk into my parents' den today, you would still see him sitting over in a corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures. His name? We always called him TV.

(Author unknown)

The Centrality of the Home

This is a powerful message from Pastor Voddie Baucham on the Centrality of the Home in multigenerational faithfullness and family discipleship. Also, he speaks in relation to Youth Ministry as well.

If the first link doesn't work, try this one instead.

The Old Rugged Cross and Preaching

A Wonderful First Day Back at TTU

Read about it

Listen to it

Pulpit Magazine

Here's a great resource!

OUR GOAL:

Pulpit Magazine began in 2003 as the online magazine of the Shepherds’ Fellowship, a ministry to church leaders who are committed to the purity of the Gospel, the inerrancy of Scripture, and a biblical philosophy of ministry. Initially Pulpit was only published six times a year. Each edition focused on key ministry issues and contemporary evangelical happenings, examining them through the grid of Scripture. The goal was to give pastors and church leaders the information they needed in a way that was both cutting edge and intensely biblical.

That goal remains the same today, even though our format has changed.

Instead of just limiting Pulpit Magazine to pastors, we now want to make the contents of Pulpit accessible to everyone. And, instead of posting a group of articles every eight weeks, we now plan to post one new article every weekday. We also hope that our readers (meaning you) will interact with the articles, and that profitable discussions will result from what is written.

The goal of fellowship is mutual encouragement for the glory of Christ. To that end, through our articles, we seek to “proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. For this purpose also [we] labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within [all who are truly His]” (Col. 1:28-29).

Batman Theology

Is it just me, or are comic books taking over our lives? Anybody feel me on this one? Don’t get me wrong, I love a good ol “hero vs nemesis, good vs evil, fate of the world hanging in the balance,” kind of story just as much as the next guy, but don’t you think it’s getting to be a little much? To be honest, I was thrilled with the first X-Men movie and the first Spiderman for that matter, but come on. I’m thinking about the last five years or so, and it seems like Marvel movie remakes are being thrust upon us like bad reality tv shows. Think about it. Superman Returns, Batman Begins, Spiderman 1,2, and 3, three X-Mens, Ghost Rider, the Punisher, Fantastic Four…twice, Iron Man, and is it just me or didn’t they just make Incredible Hulk a few years ago? Is this new one a sequel or are they just trying to pretend like the first one didn’t happen? It’s out of control, and I’m fearful of what kind of effect they’ll begin to have if we’re not careful. I’m not saying they should be banned or anything crazy, but I think it’s fair to say that with the steady influx of these films infiltrating theatres, commercials, and the myspace login page, we’d be foolish to say that they aren’t having some effect on our thinking and on our society as a whole.

The new Batman is coming out soon, and admittedly, I am a bit of a Batman fan myself, so I’ve been thinking about the last five or six movies lately, with good reason, and during one such episode a scene from Batman Begins came on in the movie-quote center of my brain. It’s a really quick scene, and would probably go unnoticed and unnoted by most movie goers, but I am a bit of a theatre geek, especially when it comes to reciting cinema quotes, so of course, I picked up on it and just couldn’t let it go. And what was really strange was the more I thought about it, the more I realized that a single line from Bruce Wayne could actually sum up the philosophy that most of our culture embraces. For the sake of time I’d like to call it “Batman Syndrome.”

I don't know if you saw the Batman movie I'm referring to here, but if you haven’t, let me paint the scene for you. Batman has just finished a serious round of cronie pummeling (of course) when the lady interest of the movie (in this case Katie Holmes) comes to face to face with the winged crusader. He's standing on a precipice of some sort (what I remember to be an open window of a very high skyscraper) and is about to make a grand exit when Mrs. Cruise asks, "Who are you? and being a superhero He can’t resist the opportunity for an over-dramatic adieu, and doesn’t miss a beat here. Batman smugly responds, "It's not who I am, it's what I do that defines me." Cue drastic whooshing sound, enter symphony over a flying farewell, and that's the end of the scene. Now, this is where the nagging voice in my head comes in.

"Mike, that's not true."

“What?” I ask myself back.

“It isn’t true and you know it.”

I don't know if this happens to you, but it happens to me all the time. Now before you start worrying about my mental state let me just tell you that I couldn't get through Iron Man without some social commentary interrupting my movie going experience, so why should I think that Batman would be any different. Maybe I’m a schizophrenic? Well, we hope not. (there I go again….) In any case, the voice continued.

"Mike, that's not true anymore."

“What do you mean, self?”

“You’re not defined by what you do.”

“I’m not?”

“Of course not. That’s the good news that you say you believe. You’re no longer a sum of what you do.

You are a sum of what has been done for you. Isn’t that the gospel Mike? Isn’t that what you’ve been traveling around telling people? You’re no longer defined by your accomplishments or your mistakes,

you are defined by what Christ has done on the cross. You don’t have to be a superhero anymore,

you just need to let yourself be rescued.”

Hmmm. Let’s think about that for a bit shall we? This simple thought that came randomly into my head watching Batman has become THE question of my life lately. Do I really believe that I’m defined by what has been done for me, or am I still struggling to prove myself to people? Am I still under the pressure of being my own Savior? What defines me?

Am I a singer?

Am I a guitar player?

Am I a comic book character?

Am I a song-writer?

Am I a screw up?

Am I a hero?

No.

The gospel says I’m a new creation. I’m not the sum of my choices, and I’m not the result of my performance. I’m a royal priesthood. A holy nation. A child of God, holy and dearly loved. John the disciple called himself, “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” So what does that make me?(Oh yeah, check it out for yourself. The only place he’s called that is in the book he wrote! The one disciple who out performs them all chooses to be known by what had been done for Him, not by what He did.) And so, I’ve got to remind myself that I am loved. That I am new. That in spite of all my failures and all my accomplishments, I am accepted and known based upon what has already been done for me, not on how much of a hero I can be.

What about you? Are you trying to be a hero? A rock star? A lover of God? Why don’t you let all that go, and let yourself be loved. It’s a much easier identity to keep up with, and you don’t even have to wear a cape. Wear his love, and let that be your alter ego.

From http://www.tenthavenuenorth.com/index.php/journal_mike/

by Mike from Tenth Avenue North